The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-06-30

stand the nomadic character Of its busi-
ness population-heeing ct the close Of
day by the hundred thousand to all the
ferries and railroads, pouring into Long
Island, streaming over New Jersey,
hurrying up the Hudson, crowding down
70 Staten Island, descending upon all the
suburbs, tired and hungry, for few hours
rest.
This daily exodus from the business
portion of the city is . paroxysm to
which business itself is . mere yawn.
The continual consciousness that the
man has to travel ten or twenty miles
when he is through his days labor in
order to get his nights rest makes his
afraid that he will not get through In
time. If you stop him In Wall street or
Broad street to speak to him he begins
to look at his watch. This is what the
foreigner has called the absorbing busi-
ness impatience of the New Yorker. But
4 IL only the haunting fear that he will
miss the train to Englewood or the boat
to Nyack.
If ever you should drop during the
day into the centre of what is known as
"down town." that is, the dense district
mile long lying below Chambers street,
you will be amazed at the intense activity
Of II. A hundred thousand people are
running against each other. 1t Is with
the utmost difficulty that you fight your
way from the Herald office to Wall
street. A thousand presses throb and
thrash under the pavements; steam
leaks from every grating an uninter-
rupted iron clamor assails you from all
sides; the streets are choked with en-
tangled vehicles.
At seven o'clock in the evening it has
all disappeared. A city as large 81
Detroit has been deported. They have
oil fled.
And It is between the hours of five
and seven that the bulk of that popula-
ton has to be transported, and it is
during those two hours that the par
oxysm of getting home occurs. Then it
is that the elevated roads are besieged
and the Brooklyn bridge grows black with
people. Everything strains to accommo-
date the rush. Men fight on the stairs
of the elevated stations and cling des-
perately to the platforms of the horse-cars.
Women have the clothes torn from them
in the rush. Children are crushed. The
strongest assert their right and fight
their way to seats. The cars are over
loaded. The iron structure of the ele-
vated road groans beneath q burden 1t
was never meant to carry.
So you will see that the great city is
subject to q pulse of life that is to say
the least abnormal. The great tide
sweeps over it twice day. Ebb and
| fow-ebb and flow all the year.
Who shall undertake to say how far
these conditions of existence affect the
character and the conduct of New
Yorkers?
One must see that the spirit of unrest
affects everything. And without rest
there can be no reflection and no beauty.
And speaking as critic and not as a
New Yorker, cannot say that New York
is yet beautiful city. Its two most
magnificent streets, Broadway and Fifth
avenue, are beautiful only in the life they
contain or the wealth they represent.
| They are stony, treeless highways in a
continual state of metamorphose.
Its immediate suburbs are in a continual
state of unfinished ghastliness. You
approach the metropolis of the continent
through acres of sunken lots that are the
receptacles of the city's rubbish; its rocks
sre covered with shanties and its levels
with putrid water.
And as if to spare the visitor this un-
seemly preface, the New York Central
road dives abashed into three miles
of dark tunnel, and whips the stranger
up to the Grand Central depot without
permitting him to see much of the beauty
of the approach. NYM CRINKLE.